What Follows After Death
by kusegoto
Summary: The death and rebirth of Karthus Dreher. A chronological collection of stories about Karthus' life.
1. In Memoriam

**A/N:** This initially was a collection of all my other Karthus based fics - given some are very short, I've chosen to complie them all into one single piece. Though chronologically chaptered, future updates will not necessarily be the latest chapter. Keep an eye out for updates and to see where they are in the timeline!

* * *

Elesia is the smallest body to be taken out of the almshouse and into the cart of dead.

Her frail hand hangs in her father's own grasp as two men that Karthus has come to know as Karlov and Frederick carry her. They carefully lay her atop the many dead, her malnourished legs lowered against the wood cart and her ankles dangle over the ledge. She lays beside Anya, an older woman without children, and in the moment between her eyes being slipped shut by the shaking hand of his silent father and the bracelet on her limp hand being slipped off by that same hand - Karthus watches her face, the sullen cheeks and the thin hair that spills from her scarf.

Her cowl is clean. He had assisted two younger children the day prior with laundry, and Elesia had asked her brother to clean the shawl she enjoys wrapping her hair in. It is pink - a rare colour to see in the depths of lower Noxus.

Karthus remembers their father's joy to give it to her on the first birthday after Dalasia's passing - wrapped in a thick red hair ribbon, a shawl that even Karthus hadn't a clue where he came into its possession. Perhaps his father had stolen it, right off the head of a noblewoman in the Ivory Ward. Perhaps he had it crafted just for Elesia, scraping together every bit of coin that he could just to cure the broken heart of his final daughter when split from her second half, the sister she shared her mother's warmth with.

The ribbon was meant to be Dalasia's. It is a shame she passed before her birthday, but perhaps it was fair, and even a touch bitterly ironic, that the ribbon could be the wrapping decoration for the roll of pink cloth. Elesia had said it reminded her of strawberries, and wore it with elegance and pride until the older ladies told her it was time to wash it.

The memory clouds Karthus' mind and eyes. He is not aware that Karlov asks that he and his father step back from the cart until his father is pulling his son back, the bracelet of Elesia's clutched in his hand.

A woman steps to his father. Her name is Diane - she lived with Anya. She takes him into his arms, and Karthus hears her speak his name and run her hand through his hair. His father has lain three pieces of his heart into the carts of the tallymen, and he crumbles into her arms.

Karthus watches the final body be brought to the cart - a young child, perhaps no older than four. But even that is difficult for Karthus to discern, for even the living find themselves starved and empty in the lower dwellings of Noxus. They shamble forth like the corpses they lay for the clean tallymen of the Kindred, gloved hands that lift the cold bodies left behind from the great hunts of Freya and Wolyo. The living mourn in the house of sickness, and Karthus can hear the wails of mothers parted from their children and friends losing their heartlights in the distance of his thoughts. Like a clouded fog that holds him free of the dawn's horror, comforted and numb.

The body that lays in the cart belonged to his sister. He remembers how she smiled to him the night before, reaching from the second bed of their singular room for her beloved shawl in her brother's hands. Had she known that her life would come to an end in the silence of night? Was the Lamb training its arrow upon her out of the corner of every eye, and she wished to be lain to the earth as she was in life?

His father's hand comes upon Karthus' shoulder - he turns him away from the cart, and they walk with the other woman that Karthus has already begun to forget toward the door of the almshouse. His father clutches the bracelet to his chest, head bowed.

"Was that hers?" that woman asks.

"Yes," his father says, and Karthus cannot hear them - distant, underwater. "I will - I am going to put it in the box, with Dali, Agri, a-and Evangeline's…"

"She loved her headscarf more," Karthus then says, and he knows his father looks at him, even as he does not return that. "You should have left that with her. She cared far more for the headscarf you gifted her when she was sixteen."

"The bracelet was from your mother," his father says, the trace of that exasperated bite that he holds for his son's ethereal horror in the wake of death lingering on his words, "before you - before you were born, Karthus. You have one too. You will wear it to Elly's memorial."

"Such a memento seems to be that we bury Mother for the third time," Karthus says, and his father strikes him.

The woman pulls him back with a harsh _Varin!_ as tears well in the swollen eyes of his father. She guides him inside, and over her shoulder she speaks - "Young man - give your father time before you start up with that act of yours."

Karthus' face stings with the memory of his father's swipe. More fingers than palm - his hand swept across his skin with the dignity of a disgraced animal, and his nails scratched him enough to make pale skin flush with a curved streak of red. It will not last. Karthus' hand touches the warm skin, and stops walking once his father has entered the building once more. Instead, he turns around, and walks himself toward the cart that Frederick sits atop, drawn by horse.

The cart moves. Karthus does not wave for the man's attention, for he knows he is there. He walks at his sister's side, holding her hand.


	2. Oath Of Service

The robes he is given are cold to wear, dried in the rolling breeze of a late fall day. But they fit, and they are new; newer than the worn shirt that rest on the table behind him.

Karthus lifts the staff of the tallymen, horizontal to his person - two single rings dangle from the base of the staff's carved head, a solid mass of what appears to be made entirely of iron. It is unevenly balanced, and angles down towards the floor as Karthus holds it in his hand. He turns it to direct its carving up, towards the ceiling.

Father Anton told him the rings are wards for spirits to leave a body be, for they are hunts of the Kindred. They rattle against the wooden pole and the curve of the iron, and spirits see the robes of the service before they flee. Karthus brings the figurehead towards him, touching the iron rings. They are roughly carved, and running his fingers against them allows him to feel stone grit crumble from the carving.

It might as well just be ore itself, hollowed free and looped around a staff. He quite likes it. They're heavy, and the sound is unpleasant to everyone else.

Brother Djoro is a man of short height, Karthus' age, and a bald head. He enters the room, a book of prayer under his arm and a hand pulling on his white collar.

"We look like wholly different men in these, dont we?"

Karthus doesn't look at him - but allows him the attention of his head turning, just enough that he can still look at the rings. "I do not like the colour white. I would rather dress in the black of Brother Frederick."

"It's because we're novices," Brother Djoro replies, stepping to his companion and patting the shoulder of his taller companion. "One day we will dress like the priests, Karthus. I hope that day comes soon for us both."

Karthus makes a pensive sound. He pushes up one of the rings, and allows it to clatter the iron. "Are we requested for prayer?"

"Once we are sworn in ceremony, yes. Do you like the staff that much?"

He repeats the motion, the iron scraping against itself, a dull and hollow sound. "I enjoy the sound it makes."

Brother Djoro's brow furrows. Karthus doesn't see, but knows he does anyway. "If you're eager for prayer, we may enter the chamber to witness. They'll swear us in once they are done."

Karthus finally turns his hand and brings the staff to stand. Brother Djoro watches, and he watches warily - Karthus sways the staff forward and back, rolling its heel against the wood floor. There's a short smile on his lips, absent from Brother Djoro's presence.

* * *

"As you kneel," Father Anton speaks, with his voice that rolls like thunder on a day marked with rain, "I will ask you to speak of the words written within the Book of Verse. Repeat the Oath of Service as you are blessed, boys."

Both Karthus and Brother Djoro kneel in a chamber of men in black robes, before the beautiful glass of the Arrow's Dance. Evening sun peers into the blue and indigo of the painted glass, casting the gentle shadow of the Lamb's mask upon those in thought and prayer. Before the boys lay their books, spread to the first page of the service chapters.

Karthus' mind drifts among the plane beyond any man made wall or country border, where the Hunt is everlasting and the Kindred lay to rest the souls taken. He breathes air that does not exist so he may find a name for his long-sought desire, thoughts walking through grass that parts for the body to pass. Will they see him among the grass and understand his devotion? Perhaps they will.

Devotion does not spare one of the Hunt. But that is the purpose of such love; a devotion declared in spite. And should the Kindred be enraged by such unnecessary love, they would tell man of its blindness through a dying prayer on a dead man's tongue, his body ripped in half by hungry teeth and arrowheads used as blades.

But that is no such punishment.

Karthus' body speaks the verse:

In devotion we shall observe the balance of life, and cherish that which we are given. It is a gift of Your that we possess, and Your arrow may claim It as you so choose. Your punishment of teeth is not one to fear, but one to reflect upon and understand. We offer ourselves as servicemen, so that You may know of us when the Hunt does come. We will bless the bodies You take for the Hunt and cherish Them, as we cherish Your judgement.

To utter the Oath by the Father's feet is to swear service to the Kindred eternal - opening one's mind to the understanding of death and unveil purpose in one's existence. Upon his head, Karthus can feel a hand press down on his thin hair, Father Anton casting an open palm in the shape of the Mark above him. He mutters his response, and Karthus can not - and does not want to - hear the words spoken by him. He knows what the ceremony of service proceeds as.

There is only his thoughts, and how his body, which is less of a body than most men, does not drift with them. It does not matter, when he reaches for the name of life and death in the mist, a thick grey that spills from between the Masks of the Lamb and Wolf. The name and purpose, the existence between..

Karthus does not return to mass until it is well through the ceremony, standing by Brother Djoro in newly draped black cowls over their white robes. The staff rattles with its iron rings when his body stands it even to its side, and it awakens him to the presence of his company.

There is truth to his devotion, but he wonders if the taste of the oath on his tongue will last. The Masks watch the service above, and Karthus thinks about the dead body of Elesia hanging from the tallymen's cart.


	3. Your Own Tombstone

"Are you well, Karthus?"

Few of the brothers visit him - the sisters, even less. Still, there are some who believe in sympathy and compassion. Karthus does not understand the apprehension to approach one who has embraced death as they have, but perhaps it is in the silence between sermon and burial that makes people uncertain around him.

Sister Anika takes a seat next to him on the stone bench in the garden. She wears a black down, a belt wrapped around her waist. It is similar to his own.

"Of course," he responds, curling his fingers around the spine of the book in his lap. "I am merely in thought. You do not need to offer your company."

"I want to," she says, crossing her ankles and resting the tips of her toes under the bench. "There's little to do today. Madame Helena is ill; we cannot do our afternoon song."

"I wish her good health."

The hunger for death lies for him.

"It is why I hope _you_ are in similar health." Sister Anika smiles. "What are you reading?"

"It is a tome, but I do not have interest in the magic." He returns to the page - an ink sketch of ocean and land greets the dark sky of Noxus. "This is one of the few images I have discovered of the Shadow Isles. I am memorizing it."

Sister Anika's smile fades, as does the polite light to her eye. "You know you should stop seeking such a place. It is not only unholy, but it is _dangerous_. Bilgewater's seas are rumored to be cursed."

"Is the magic of the Isles not that which curses the ocean?"

"I'm not denying their _existence_ \- I could not say for sure if they exist or not. But there must be _something_ cursing the water, right?" The hand she places on his shoulder feels customary, and lacks true kindness. Karthus finds he doesn't think much of that at all. "Please don't get any idea to go out there, Karthus. You would certainly perish."

She turns the page for him. Karthus does not think she understands his intentions. Nonetheless; he shares the book with her, and his gaze wanders to a stone in the dirt, thinking of a tombstone's piece.


	4. Unholy Magic

Samuel is sixty-two.

He once sailed the waters of the Guardian Sea with salt on his skin and wind in his sails. He has always lived by the sea. He is close to the men who keep the peace in Bilgewater's port during the day, with only a sloop to his name resting in her docks. From the short cliff above his wing of the dock, he can watch her, a memory of his days at the open sea but a warm one all the same.

This night is not as warm as the memories hold.

It is a fool's curse to be walking Bilgewater at night. The watchmen retreat to their bunks, and though the streets remain lit with the glow of oil lamps inside taverns and homesteads, the closer you get to the docks, the less warm those streets become. And with it, the blades grow sharper.

Fortunately, Samuel is no fool. He knows the route to take to walk from The Happy Lady to his humble abode that attracts the least of Hargven's thugs - it is a short walk on a well lit street, lamps tied together with string across the building exteriors to make up for the missing posts.

He knows how to get home without spending too long in the darkness.

The soul he met did not.

The lad did not appear harmed by the hecklers - Hargven's men, or Tybalt's men, Samuel hadn't an idea. It was a short affair, and one against the better judgement of the old sailor; telling wharf rats to not rob the homeless often proved a fruitless and dangerous endeavour. The boy, however, allowed himself to be guided off by his elder, no matter how the eyes stared at the pair.

The lad - not much of a lad at all, but he's young enough to be Samuel's son, maybe even grandson - told him he was on a pilgrimage. Samuel told him there was a ferry from Bilgewater to Buhru come morning. The lad shook his head, with his long hair, and pushed the coin towards him.

The Isles.

The ship is nary more than a sailboat - a humble girl whose deck sighs with the weight of its passengers when they board. It's a melody that sings sweet, and couples itself with the whisper of the ocean. It's something that calms the nerves in Samuel's throat; something to focus his mind on when he turns back to his company and see he isn't moving from where he sits.

It has been some few days at sea. His robes are worn, and something in the old sailor makes him think about the old preachers of Noxus. He's been there, but only once - a honeymoon for another time. His hair is unwashed, dampened only by the mist of the sea. And though his hands and face are thin, the legs he has are long - he clears Samuel by a clear five inches.

"You alright, son?" He calls over his shoulder, eyes on a dark horizon, clouded by the set sun. Like the ocean, he is soothing; he speaks like he's got a secret for you.

The boy lifts his head in his direction, staring forward. Samuel only realizes he's got his attention when he turns his head back again.

Silence consumes him yet.

"Just saying," he continues, turning his head forward once more, "you've got me concerned here. Ain't nobody been to the Isles, much less come back from them alive and well. Don't know much out there."

The wind is strong, yet eases him. His heart rests too close to his throat for him to ignore it.

"Hope you find what you're looking for when we get there. Would hate for you to come all the way out here and be disappointed."

Silence that stretches on like sailcloth finds them. It is only the salt, and the wind, and the rock of nighttime waves, and then, finally, there is a voice.

"I will."

Samuel casts his head back, from wheel to man, and has to look twice when he sees the knife unwraveled in his companion's hands. Quickly, his hand reaches for his pistol.

"I'm armed," he says, "I'll shoot you dead right here."

The curiosity in Karthus' face is gentle, lifting his head from the blade's edge to his captain. The shadows under his eyes are darker than the black of night.

"I would not dream of bringing you harm, dear sir Samuel," is his response. The ice of the night sets in his lofty voice, and he sounds like a sinking ship. "Forgive my display. I simply was inspecting it. It is our tool to cross the Divide."

"Is that so."

"Not a soul has discovered the Shadow Isles with mortal means of navigation. We will cross the Divide, the sea shall carry us."

Samuel retreats his hand away from his hip. He knows it's loaded. You don't sleep in Bilgewater without a gun by your hip, or head, or hand. "Hope she can carry us home, too."

Their boat sways, looms. There is mist that passes the open deck - one of seasalt and traces of ice, and it settles on Samuel's face like a northern snowfall as night continues to shade the deck.

It should not be nightfall yet, Samuel muses.

The sky is cloudy, yet it had been so during the day, too. The sailor worried deeply of potential rainfall, yet it was of great fortune that it did not. Yet now, the clouds hang heavy and low, like they're a hand reaching towards the ocean - a child reaching into a fountain, or perhaps the steady glass surface of a still pond. There's a weight deep inside of him, and it coils to something _unsettled_ when he hears a body move behind him.

He clutches the wheel, feels the pull of his hand towards his pistol, but Karthus strides past him, dagger seen, and watches the horizon.

Land. Distantly, then all at once, like sailing too close to shore. Then, the ship lurches forward, and Samuel only registers she's still floating when his chest slams into the navigation wheel and the air of his lungs returns. He quickly passes to the left side of the ship, staring into the darkness of the water to inspect the damages - she floats on past the rock that caught her, and Samuel's words are cut short when he feels the lurch of another collision, this one halting the ship all together.

"Divines," he spits, moving forward and fixing his coat, walking down to the prow, "Forgive me, son, fog's too thick, there's rocks in the shore and we're too close -"

He lifts his head, to stare at what has caught his passenger's attention. Thick, black mist that creeps from the shore. Deep within the forest, like seeking spirits that detect the life still aboard the boat. Like smoke on the water, it creeps forward.

Samuel's eyes are wide and he only starts speaking once he's grabbed a long pike and brought it down the length of the prow, wedging it between stone and boat. "Get that pike, boy! We're turning back! There's _demons_ here!"

His passenger is still - or is he there at all? The blood in his head beats in the sailor's ears, loud and vicious to drown out the growing cries of a haunted mass that reach out towards the vessel. Samuel forces the pike further between the stone and the prow, wrenching her from the sea soaked rock and snapping the instrument in half. The top half clatters against the deck and rolls back as the waves pull the ship back, and Samuel turns to bound towards the wheel.

Karthus is gone. The dagger is on deck, its blade now slick with blood. In the crash of wave on wood, there was a body against the deep waves, and the mist devoured towards a point in the ocean.

Samuel hasn't the time to mourn a stranger.

The terror pushes him towards Bilgewater, leagues away from the growing reality of a deep grave, and it is only by the mercy of coming mist that wind catches the sails. Samuel turns his head back, staring at the coming mist, the demons within -

A body is aloft. It is no human.

Samuel pulls his pistol from his belt and fires in its direction, turning his body as he does so. He fires twice, and he is unsure of where the bullets strike, if it even hits the body at all. The robes are familiar as the creature comes towards him, and it is _Karthus_ , eyes without light nor life. He is soaked with the ocean, and in his hand glows a deep green light.

"Back!" Samuel cries, pressing back against the wheel. It turns against him, and drops his balance. "Begone! Remain on the Isles! Do not take me with you!"

Karthus lowers himself to the deck, and walks at him. The last thing Samuel can see is his hand on his throat, the tally-staff against his gut, and the smile of a man happy to die.


	5. The Deathsinger's Dirge

It's on what he _believes_ is the second day that breathing in the Mist starts to burn.

It is not warm, like the sparks of fireside light, or perhaps like warm ashes from smothered flame. There is not much time for him to question the complexity a statement such as _the air is not warm but it burns my throat_ may contain, for 'to burn' anything one requires a source of potent heat to deliver char. But he knows that much farther north in Valoran there are lands of heavy snow that freeze the air in such a veil of ice that the body can stiffen, fall victim to the chill, and the ice is so sharp that it burns the skin. Karthus thinks the air on the Shadow Isles is as cold as the northern frostlands - perhaps colder.

Snow is cold. Ice is colder. But the seawater that lingers in the air burns Karthus' throat the way swallowing small, sharp pebbles does. Gravelled debris that scrape down his insides no matter how he covers his mouth to filter the air, for even covering his mouth will dizzy him from eventual lack of any deep, meaningful breaths. The living dead boy stumbles through the deep forests of whatever numbered island he happens upon, the cold body of the sailor bobbing in the ocean as potent in his mind as it may ever be. It does not terrify him. The dead shell that washed ashore behind him did not, will not humble him.

But the pain in his throat might stop him, all the same.

He leans upon the staff to steady his step, the same one he had taken with him since the first step out of the walls of Noxus Prime. His teeth grit behind a grimace, from the pain of his throat and the pain down his wrist, where an insignia of the old churches bleeds down his drying robes. He no longer drips with seawater from the salt-laced baptism he performed on himself, but the memory of it lingers. Like the last bit of life inside of him that has yet to be wholly devoured by the Mist - eaten from the inside, picked apart like the last of carrion ribs.

His soul must taste like salt water and whatever crusts the underside of boats. It must be absolutely disgusting, and he starts to laugh at the idea of disgusting his new spiritual hosts, so he takes a deep breath to bite the spirits out of the sky, sucking in through his teeth. Karthus breathes in until his lungs can't take anymore, the grit of the air cutting deep inside of him and twisting him dizzy losing his grip on the tallystaff and tripping to the earth.

The last of his bones collapse into the dust and dirt, and he coughs viciously as the island's poison takes inside him. A bloody mist splatters against the ground, his tongue now seared with the taste of copper. Karthus wipes the back of his thin and worn hand over his lower lip, looking down at the bloodied saliva that now stains his skin. Carefully, he lifts the staff and pulls himself back to his feet, coughing into his sleeve to relieve himself of any more bloody remnants of his gored throat from staining his skin.

Magic flows through him, now. The last of his life is leaving his mortal coil, and it's allowing him to get a little closer before it releases.

He's dying. Is this what dying feels like? Warm and cold and a throat ripped by the grit and grain in the air? He's dizzy. He's tired. He keeps walking, and he keeps walking, until he thinks he's walked the length of the island before there is still more to the path, framed by a forest's grove. There's a temple.

A temple.

Building.

The remnants of civilization?

Karthus doesn't make it to the foot of the steps before he drops again, though manages to catch himself before his body crashes into stone steps and instead sits down it. One hand on a step ahead and the other gripping the staff still, he pulls himself up the steps, one by one, until the door opens.

It is a monk. He is short, wide and muscular. A vial of iridescent blue dangles around his neck. His hands rest upon a spade with a hook at the heel - and his eyes, terrifically beautiful and just as blue as the open sea, stare in wonder at the dying man.

Karthus smiles with rotten teeth stained red from a stolen voice.


	6. Dark Moon Rising

The monk brought him inside, half on a note of desperation at the sight of lingering life inside of a being upon the Shadow Isles, however faint and unwilling it was to remain.

He sits with Karthus, watching him in mournful wonder as Karthus stares at the point of his staff and pinches the pointed edye between two fingers. He pays the monk such little attention that he almost forgets his presence all together - until the monk heaves a heavy sigh and speaks.

"You should not be alive," he says, with a voice so soft it reminds Karthus of an old burial song.

"You are correct," Karthus replies. "I am not."

"You speak my language, yet your accent... is foreign." The monk seems confused with his remark. It is the most inflection he has had so far. "Where did you learn to speak that?"

Karthus looks in the direction of the monastery door. "Out there," he says, and points a thin, starving finger to the outside view from a shattered window. "And even in here, among them - the spirits. They speak to me, here. I understand them."

"From where do you hail?"

"Here. I am of these Shadow Isles, now." Karthus wants to swallow, to aid his dry, drying, dying throat. But his throat will not allow him. The muscles strain inside and tense whenever he attempts to. It hurts when he tries.

The monk frowns. "No. In life - where did you hail?"

"Noxus." His hands touch the staff once more. Among the land of the dead, and his fixation only holds on the last remnant of his life. "I do not wish to return. I have travelled far from Noxus to discover the beauty of these islands for myself."

"You are several centuries too late, my boy - these isles have not been beautiful for a long time."

Karthus laughs. A dry, hoarse, cracking laugh that doesn't hold itself together and hurts more than breathing. "Not at all. The spirits that have called me have introduced me to a land far greater than any forest's grove."

He does not understand the silent anger to cross the monk's expression, for he remains as tepid and mournful as ever. Perhaps the only rage that exists within him anymore is holy rage. "Beauty does not bloom in such suffering."

"It is not suffering - it is freedom."

"I have endured the ' _freedom_ ' of the isles for much longer than you have known its myth." The monk reaches for his shovel - he uses it to lift himself up. He only towers over Karthus' seated form; he appears short, stocky. "Most who arrive on this land are among the throes of death from a terrible tragedy. I bid their bodies to the ocean, so they may not live in torment among the undead."

He lifts the shovel, and knocks the spade on the stone. Firm, but without threat. Mist gathers around him like a shawl, and Karthus just wants to watch it swirl like chalk water.

"I do not know many who have sought us as pilgrimage. I do not have what you seek, young man."

"But you have already begun to fascinate me - give me your time," Karthus requests, his smile a twisted hope as he reaches for the monk. He is returned with a swat from his large hand.

"No. I must ask you to leave - take with you your fantasy of death."

He is dizzy when he stands. He is dizzy when the monk forces him out the door. Karthus leans against old stone and drags himself down the wall, a tired, dying smile over him while he presses his cheek to the door.

Karthus doesn't fall asleep, but he dreams of spirits come to claim him all the same.


	7. The Aftermath Of A Funeral

He begins to die a second time.

* * *

In years time, when his flayed lungs and ache in every bone have long since faded, and the wasted muscle wrapped around his bones is just sinew and wasted flesh, he will forget what it was like. For he will always consider the plunge into the cold ocean with a prayer in his mouth as the moment when he shed his mortal coil and freed his soul into the maw of the undead - but the days that followed were what took his body.

He met the Shepherd. He turned him away from the monastery, no matter how many times he returned to waste away on the steps.

It was on the fifth day that he continued to search the stretch of islands, beyond the shore that met the monastery's dying front. Karthus' heels ached with every step, the bones inside of his almost-worn boots trying to rip through his skin.

His voice felt stripped. When he exhaled, it came through a hole in his throat.

Karthus finds an empty church. He does not leave the church for some time.

* * *

Spirits eventually gather. They brush too close to his body when he lays on beds older than the empire he came from, looking to get under his skin.

He realizes he does not need to sleep, for exhaustion ceased to cast its weary shadow over him after what he could only presume to be when the day crawled to the next through the endless cycle of night. But it feels like a routine that he needs - even if he doesn't particularly want it. It will be one of the many things he sheds upon the islands. He already has forgotten what day it is.

Karthus lays upon a mattress stuffed with feathers and wool so old that it felt like nothing better than straw. The spirits get closer, and he can see eyes where there are none, looking closer into who he is, like they're looking for the blood inside of him that doesn't beat anymore. His body is dead, his mind is not - in the land of the undead, that is common.

But he hasn't lost his body just yet.

Is it punishment? No. No punishment, only natural progression. Decay. Loss.

He doesn't need to sleep. He's not tired. He can't lift his head. The memory of whoever he was dries his lips, forcing him to breathe in its dry and cold air. When he smiles in the hum of curious spirits, he breaks the skin.

* * *

Walking hurts so much.

Karthus holds himself against the wall of a building that could have been a house, could have been a library, could have been something more before time got to it. There is water in his boots, wearing through the soles and numbing his feet. Every step cuts. Every step bleeds.

A hand drags against the wall. The magic waxes, wanes, like a moon behind clouds. He hasn't been able to lift himself into the air since his ascension.

He tries to take a step. The bones are ripping through his skin. Karthus lifts his head, and with it one leg, and tries to step up into nothing, summoning all of his dizzied focus. Like ascending a single step, he leaps into the air, and then drops back down to the ground, sloshing damp grass and jolting horrific, numbing pain up his calves.

He doesn't scream. But he almost does.

The worn, torn, pulled leather comes apart with just a couple of tugs. He's bleeding, but he can't feel it while walking through cold water from past rain. His skin is growing black. There will be nothing left soon.

* * *

Fire, as it naturally should, catches and burns in a hearth within the church. But it is only light, and does not warm his skin, no matter how close he sways his hands to the flames.

His robes have long since lost the deep navy colours they once had, before the islands, before even the cove of Bilgewater, however long ago it was. They rest, damp against his legs, wearing away near their hems. He does not think he could stitch them, for he cannot feel anything through his finger tips. Death and an icy curse alike blacken his fingers, swelling them around his bones.

Maybe fire doesn't actually work on the Shadow Isles. Maybe the spirits run through the flames, playing in the light, and steal away the heat. Or perhaps he just cannot feel anything anymore, running through water and dust on books and more water and there is so much water on the islands, not just around them, in grass and buildings and rivers, in the dead and in the mud. It is dirty and runs with ashes, grass, dirt.

Karthus manages to focus on his hands. He closes them, and presses his broken nails into his palms.

They look different. Longer. Still black, but deforming. Maybe it's the death settling in.

He wishes he could die faster.

* * *

It had been three days since he walked across any surface. Dragging himself to the hearth had begun to hurt his hips, which snap and pop in ways that reminded Karthus of older men in the almshouse. Elders that had managed to outlive the young. He doesn't want to think about them anymore.

Each step breaks his focus that he has to force himself into keeping, his feet having bled themselves to black like his hands - thin, fragile. The last of his strength for the day allowed him to pull a chair from behind an abandoned study desk. There is a plan.

Karthus sat in it for an hour before he could rise once more. The book open in his lap is moved to the floor, and as best he can, he lifts himself on top of the chair. His legs aren't steady.

Even without much weight to him anymore, the old wood does not agree with his decision. But he balances himself, hands at his side, and glances to the book, the incantation written centuries ago by priests who could not have predicted the fall of the islands. Karthus thinks about the services and the magic and the prayer, as he takes a step off the chair, bracing himself for the impact against stone and the darkness to follow.

Pain does not come. He looks down his withered body, and he is hovering. Weak legs hang uselessly in the air, like horrific sights behind the doors of the desperate. There is no pressure on any part of his body to keep himself above the floor - no pull on his shoulders, no seat for his rear, no invisible collar for his throat. Like plunging into deep water, Karthus levitates, feeling the peace below his hips.

He has the strength to smile. His jaw has begun to hurt in these several days. Death sweeps itself up his body, leaving gaunt eyes and thinning skin, but at last, he feels its peace. He sighs the last of the incantation, and the chorus of several souls drag from his lungs.


End file.
